The first Mexican cineaste of note, Fernando De Fuentes is still
considered the director whose interpretations of the Mexican revolution
and whose contributions to typical Mexican genres have not been surpassed.
Early sound film production in Mexico was dominated by foreigners:
Russians who accompanied Eisenstein in the making of
Que Viva México
, Spaniards who passed through Hollywood, Cubans, and U.S. citizens who
somehow ended up there. De Fuentes was one of the first Mexicans to be
given a chance to direct sound films in his country. After several false
starts with "grey and theatrical melodramas," De Fuentes
indicated first in
Prisionero trece
that his métier was the "revolutionary tragedy."
During 1910–17, Mexico passed through a cataclysmic social
revolution the cultural expression of which resounded principally in the
extraordinary murals of Diego Rivera, David Siquieros, and José
Orozco. Fiction films did not examine this watershed event seriously until
1933 when De Fuentes made
El compadre Mendoza.
Far from the epic monumentality of revolutionary transformation painted
on the walls by Rivera or Siquieros,
El compadre Mendoza
recreates the revolution from a perspective similar to Orozco's
vision of individual tragedies and private pain.

Rosalio Mendoza is the owner of a large hacienda which is constantly
threatened by the conflict's warring factions. In order to appease
them, Mendoza pretends to support whichever group is currently visiting
him—something he accomplishes by wining and

Fernando De Fuentes

dining his guests in a room conspicuously decorated with a portrait of
the appropriate leader. Eventually, Mendoza and General Nieto (a follower
of Emiliano Zapata's agrarian revolt) become close friends. Mendoza
names his son after Nieto and asks him to be the
compadre
(godfather). But after Mendoza is ruined economically, he betrays Nieto
in order to flee to Mexico City. The emphasis on fraternal bloodletting,
the corruption of ideals, and disillusion in the aftermath of the
revolution is powerfully conveyed in both
El compadre Mendoza
and
Vámonos con Pancho Villa.
They remain even today the best cinematic treatments of the Mexican
revolution.

De Fuentes's work in traditional Mexican genres is also important.
Allá en el Rancho Grande
is the progenitor of the
charro
genre. The Mexican singing cowboy received his cinematic introduction to
Mexico and the rest of Latin America in this immensely popular film. The
attraction of such nostalgia for a never-existent Arcadia can be seen in
the fact that in the year following the release of
Rancho Grande
, more than half of the Mexican films produced were similar pastoral
fantasies, and these have continued to be a staple of Mexican cinema.

The
charro
genre's domination of Mexican cinema is almost matched by films
about the Mexican mother. De Fuentes directed perhaps the most palatable
of such works,
La gallina clueca.
This film starred Sara García, the character actress who is the
national paradigm of the sainted, long-suffering, self-sacrificing mother.
In De Fuentes's hands the overworked Oedipal melodrama is denied
its usual histrionics and becomes an interesting work as well as the
definitive film of this sub-genre.

His better films demonstrate De Fuentes's strong narrative style,
noted for its consistency and humor. They do not seem particularly dated,
and De Fuentes utilizes visual techniques such as the rack focus or the
dissolve particularly effectively and unobtrusively. He also makes telling
use of overlay montages, à la Eisenstein or Vertov, to convey moods
or concepts. In regard to singing—one of the banes of Mexican
cinema—De Fuentes has been uneven. For example, in his two films on
the revolution, restraint is shown and songs function well in relation to
the story line. Unfortunately,
Allá en el Rancho Grande
and its various sequels are characteristically glutted with songs.

De Fuentes's career as a director went from the sublime to the
ridiculous. In one year he plummeted from the heights of
Vámonos con Pancho Villa
to the depths of
Allá en el Rancho Grande.
The enormous commercial success of the latter film throughout Latin
America sealed De Fuentes's fate. It was popular because De Fuentes
is a talented director; but the commercial rewards for those talents came
at a high price. After
Vámonos con Pancho Villa
, De Fuentes settled into the repetition of mediocre and conventional
formula films.

—John Mraz

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